


Again the Riots Come

by 16woodsequ



Series: Never Again Forever [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: America has Issues, Angry Steve Rogers, Black Lives Matter, Civil Rights Movement, Current racism, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Racism, Segregation, WW2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24525070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/16woodsequ/pseuds/16woodsequ
Summary: Steve Rogers is no stranger to the history of racism in the United States.
Series: Never Again Forever [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1410241
Comments: 28
Kudos: 110





	Again the Riots Come

When Steve presents his choice for the men to be on his elite team, Command is less than pleased. They try to cover it up of course, showing off uncomfortable, sympathetic smiles and sharing looks with each other as if privately lamenting his naivete.

“Are you _sure_ these are the people you want on your team?” they ask him in simpering, wheedling tones. “Wouldn’t it be better to get the most qualified people? Your team will be the face of the fight against Hydra.”

He stands at attention and smiles all teeth at them. “I trust these men with my life,” he says, knowing full well that the ‘qualifications’ of those he’d chosen are not the issue. “We have experience working together during our march back into Allied territory. Finding me a new team will be a waste of valuable time and resources.”

They are unhappy in the face of his arguments. “Captain,” one of them says, leaning forward to grind the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray in the middle of the meeting table. “I believe there is more at stake here than you realise.” The other men around the table begin to nod as the speaker pulls out a new cigarette. “A team like the one you’ve presented us…” He shakes his head. “Well, I’m sure you can imagine the problems that will come from it.”

Steve’s eyes glint and he keeps his smile wide. “Maybe you should enlighten me, sir,” he says, his hands tightening from where they’re clasped behind his back. “Everyone on my team is a well-chosen asset.”

The man with the cigarette shifts a little uncomfortably. “Of course,” he says, tapping a yellow-stained finger on the table in front of him. “But I’m sure you understand that the… demographic of your team is an issue.”

A man with a thick, bristly mustache nods across from him and jumps in. “Of course, we would be happy to approve some of the members you’ve presented us,” he says, looking as if he were granting a large favour. Around him the rest of the committee start nodding.

“Sergeant Barnes has already proving his skill in sharp-shooting,” a blond, rather round looking man says, seemingly invigorated by the proposed compromise. “I’m sure he’d be a perfect fit for your team.”

Steve presses his lips together into a grim line, growing sick of the half-spoken sentences and veiled implications. “And Private Jones?” he asks, his voice hinting sharpness as he cuts to the point. “Would he be approved?”

Uneasiness settles over the committee, as tangible as the cigarette smoke in the air, and the mustached man smiles thinly at him. “I’m sure Private Jones’ skills could be better utilised in a _different_ unit,” he says, licking his lips. “We are, of course, grateful for his service–” He nods, and the committee all bob their heads in unison, like a tableful of puppets. “–but I’m sure he, and everyone else, would be more comfortable if he were in—”

“A segregated unit?” Steve cuts in, earning a few glares for the disrespect.

The man with the cigarette blows out a long string of smoke and leans back. “Of course,” he says easily, and Steve finds his hands tightening again behind his back. “You must understand Captain,” he says with a solemn look. “We risk lowering morale by integrating coloured and white units, and bringing Private Jones into a primarily white team raises a dozen logistical problems that can easily be avoided.”

Steve breathes in slowly to calm himself and sets his shoulders, his eyes flicking over the men in front of him. He’d known, of course, that he would get pushback at his choice of teammates. A small elite team with multiple nationalities, a Japanese descendant _and_ a coloured man? Bucky had shaken his head at him knowingly, an impressed gleam in his eyes.

 _“You sure know how to pick ‘em_ ,” he’d said, and the rest of the team around him had erupted into loud cheers and good-natured ribbing. They’d all known the stakes, no matter Roosevelt’s order to outlaw racial discrimination in the war industry, no matter the qualifications of his choices.

The fact remains that military units are segregated by colour.

Thankfully, Steve is currently riding on press and public adoration, and the military is desperate to use the symbol of Captain America.

He looks down on the committee and offers them a wide, 1000-watt Captain America smile. “This is the team I want,” he says, steel underlining his words. “This is the one I will fight with.”

They agree reluctantly, they’re approval as painful as pulling teeth. But they listen to him, because he’s Captain America, the hero of the hour, and because he’s white.

oOo

He sometimes wonders what it’s like for Gabe to be one of the only black men in camp. It’s well known that Steve does not tolerate discrimination towards his team, and the Howling Commandos are fiercely protective of their own, but he’s not naïve enough to believe that that’s enough to protect Gabe— or Morita for that matter— from more subtle, everyday aggressions.

Gabe can give as good as he gets, but he hardly dares. The army hovers like a disapproving, all-seeing eye over them all, waiting for any excuse to pull the plug on the project, ready for any reason to sweep in and saddle Captain America with a _proper_ team, handpicked by _them_ this time.

He finds himself smiling a little at the thought of how frustrating it must be for a few of them then, that the Commandos live up to and exceed the expectations placed on them. He’s fully aware that the army had been content to keep black units like Gabe’s out of combat—keeping them in labour and service jobs until desperate need had forced them to do otherwise—and the success of his much contested team leaves him with a sharp sense of vindication.

He wonders sometimes what it’s like for Gabe and Morita to fight in the name of freedom, when their own countrymen don’t believe in offering the same freedoms to them back home. Morita reminds them quietly around the fire of the internment camps back home, and Gabe tells him of the “Double V” Campaign, which calls for a victory over fascism abroad, and a victory over racism at home.

He thinks over the riots in Detroit, and the Red Summer of 1919, and he knows that a single desegregated unit in the army is hardly a drop of water in the ocean of needed change.

oOo

When he had woken up to find himself in 2012, SHIELD had taken it upon itself to educate him on the decades of history he had missed. He gets handed a neat little file marked **Civil Rights Movement** , and it lists out for him in simple terms the social revolution that had rocked the nation in the 60s.

It lists each item off clinically, the Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, Emmett Till’s murder, Rosa Parks, the Watts riot, Martin Luther King Jr, his assassination… Everything wrapping up neatly in the end with a small paragraph about the election of the first Black President in 2009.

He has to do his own research to learn about the return of Black soldiers after World War Two, and how they had contributed to the movement… and how they had been the target of racial violence in an exact reflection of the Red Summer of 1919.

oOo

Gabe had once given him a poem by a Black poet that had stuck with him throughout the war, and its words echo back at him now.

_Looky here, America_

_What you done done —_

_Let things drift_

_Until the riots come._

_Now your policemen_

_Let your mobs run free._

_I reckon you don’t care_

_Nothing about me._

_You tell me that Hitler_

_Is a mighty bad man._

_I guess he took lessons_

_from the ku klux klan._

_You tell me mussolini’s_

_Got an evil heart._

_Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont_

_That he had his start —_

_Cause everything that hitler_

_And mussolini do,_

_Negroes get the same_

_Treatment from you._

_You jim crowed me_

_Before hitler rose to power —_

_And you’re STILL jim crowing me_

_Right now, this very hour._

_Yet you say we’re fighting_

_For democracy._

_Then why don’t democracy_

_Include me?_

_I ask you this question_

_Cause I want to know_

_How long I got to fight_

_BOTH HITLER — AND JIM CROW._

“Those Nazi followed America with their own Jim Crow laws,” Gabe had said, when the soldiers around them had started to speculate about the end of the war. “Nazism is never gonna be gone until racism is gone too.”

Now, 75 years in the future, as Steve and the Avengers suit up to go march in solidarity in the protests over the murder of Black Americans and police brutality, he can’t help the deep-seeded anger that fills him at the truth of those words.

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://righttofightexhibit.org/home/) is a link to a brief history of the African-American experience fighting in WW2.
> 
> [This](https://theconversation.com/african-americans-fighting-fascism-and-racism-from-wwii-to-charlottesville-82551) is information on the fight between fascism and racism and "Double Victory" campaign.
> 
> [This](https://eji.org/reports/targeting-black-veterans/) talks about the lynching of Black veterans. 
> 
> The poem Steve thinks about is "Beaumont to Detroit" by Langston Hughes. I found it while researching this fic, and I though it was really poignant for what's happening now.
> 
> My tumblr:[16woodsequ](https://16woodsequ.tumblr.com/)


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